Driving innovation to create technologies, anticipate future needs and create new hi-tech markets. This is one of Leonardo's objectives, as outlined in the 2024-2028 Industrial Plan, according to the main guideline consisting of the progressive and increasingly widespread use of digitalisation in industrial production.

The Innovation Award is one of the initiatives launched by Leonardo to respond to these needs, calling upon the talent and creativity of its employees and stimulating interdisciplinarity and shared knowledge, considering their contribution to the growth and success of the company to be strategic.

The latest edition of the Award focused on the themes of multi-domain and digital continuum and was divided into seven categories.

1,070 proposals were submitted (an increase of 320 compared to the previous edition), involving 2,282 people from the Leonardo Group, including 50 Research Fellows from Leonardo Labs.

These are the winners of the recently concluded edition:

Best Development 2023 category, which rewards the technological and product results achieved during the past year:

• Winner: SEE-ALL – Corporate Proposal – Leonardo Labs and Electronics business area
• Team: Massimiliano Dispenza, Massimiliano Proietti, Pierfrancesco Ulpiani, Ugo Zanforlin, Lorenzo Francesco Livi
   

Digital Transformation category, which focuses on the digitalisation of processes and services, with a view to promoting the technological evolution of the company:

• Winner: Predictive 4 logistics and HELIanalytics – Helicopters business area proposal
• Team: Giorgio Cova, Francesco Pierpaoli, Massimo Manzini, Matteo Aldo Bonvicini, Michele Cremona, Simone Bogni

Innovative Idea category, which rewards the most innovative ideas, not yet the subject of investments, which can open new horizons of technological, product or business development to support Leonardo's growth:

• Winner: ARCS: Active Radar Cross Section – Aircraft Business Area Proposal
• Team: Francesco Flora, Stefano Martorana, Francesco Acerra

People First category, which rewards new formats that value people, their well-being and inclusiveness, promoting a sense of belonging among colleagues.

• Winner: Dinner by Leo – Aircraft business area proposal
• Team: Matteo Piviotti, Chiara Ferraris, Giuseppina Nugnes

Sustainability category, which rewards projects that put sustainable development at the centre of the proposal:

• Winner: Circula Chip: recovery of strategic materials from foundry and microelectronics processing waste – Electronics business area proposal
• Team: Francesco Scavone, Luca Latessa

Innovative Factory category, which rewards technological innovation for the optimisation of operations processes:

• Winner: Leonardo Digital Production System – Electronics UK business area proposal
• Team: Lauren Orszt, Amy Lauder, Helen Allen, Jackie Paterson, Luke Stammers, Scott McManus, Vanessa Caluban, Neil Silcock, Josh Munn

Interdivisional Idea category, which promotes collaboration between different business areas, subsidiaries and joint ventures, to stimulate a multi-domain and multidisciplinary approach:

• Winner: O.N.E.: On-board Neural Engine - An innovative approach to predictive maintenance in the aeronautical sector - Proposal for the Electronics and Aircraft business areas
• Team: Luca Monorchio, Andrea Bonzano, Christian Giusti, Francesco Ferrari, Luigi Ciolli, Matteo Santini, Roberto Luisi

The winners of this category received, in addition to the prize, funding to verify the actual applicability of their project and evaluate its impact on the business.

The proposals from the Innovation Award, and which find industrial application, are also reflected in Leonardo's patent portfolio, which in 2023 grew by 37% compared to the previous year. Among these patents, there are also the first ones filed by Leonardo Labs, a network of research and development laboratories interconnected with universities, polytechnics, research centres and partner companies, which create an innovation ecosystem in constant evolution. In the period 2022/2023, approximately 80% of the patents filed by Leonardo mainly concern Platform and System Design (37%), Material Structures & Manufacturing (26%) and Integration (24%).